JP2004029905A - Facility information outputting device - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To suppress work load required for coping with the increase in the kinds of facilities 14 in a server computer 50 for preparing a report 59 related to the facilities 14. <P>SOLUTION: A server computer 50 collects an information group from a plurality of target facilities 14, and outputs the report 59 related with the respective facilities 14. The plurality of target facilities 14 include the plural kinds of facilities 14 whose specific information groups are different. The server computer 50 is provided with a storage part 53 for a report for storing a database 53a and a program executing part 52 for executing a report preparation program 52a. The database 53a associates data for specifying the kinds of the facilities 14, data for specifying the information of the facilities, and data for specifying the arrangement of respective information in output information. A report preparing program 52a prepares the report 59 by using the specific information groups collected from the facilities 14 and the database 53a. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2004,JPO

Description

[0001]
TECHNICAL FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a facility information output apparatus, and more particularly to a facility information output apparatus that collects information groups from a facility group including a plurality of types of facilities having different specific information groups and outputs predetermined output information on each facility.
[0002]
[Prior art]
2. Description of the Related Art In recent years, a system has appeared in which facilities such as air-conditioning equipment installed in various buildings such as a commercial building, an office building, a hospital, a hotel, a warehouse, and a factory are connected to a remotely installed information collection center. For example, in an air conditioner 14 in a building 10 shown in FIG. 1, there is a facility management device 13 that controls and manages a plurality of indoor units 12 and outdoor units 11. The facility management device 13 performs air conditioning control in accordance with a command from a manager of the building 10 or the like, and provides monitoring data of the state of the outdoor unit 11 or the indoor unit 12 to the manager of the building 10 or the like. Fulfill. The equipment management device 13 is directly or indirectly connected to the information management computer 21 of the external information collection center 20 or the like. As a result, the information collection center 20 can provide services that cannot be provided by the facility management apparatus 13 in the building 10 to the owner of the building 10 or the like.
[0003]
Specifically, the information collection center 20 can monitor the failure of the air conditioning equipment 14 of each building 10, predict the failure, manage the fee for using the equipment, propose improvement by data analysis, create various reports, and the like. For example, the monitoring terminal 22 of the information collection center 20 or the monitoring terminal 31 of the service center 30 provided in another place continuously monitors the air conditioning equipment 14 in the building 10 for 24 hours, and an abnormality occurs or a failure occurs. In some cases, there is a service that dispatches a service engineer from the service center 30 to the building 10.
[0004]
[Problems to be solved by the invention]
As described above, in a system that manages facilities of a plurality of buildings at an information collection center, it is possible to output various types of information on the buildings in the form of reports and output data to owners of each building. Many. For example, when an abnormality or failure occurs in any air conditioning equipment, a report on the abnormality or the like is created. In some cases, a facility diagnosis report is output online, and an annual report on energy consumption and charges is output.
[0005]
Therefore, an apparatus for creating output information such as a report exists in the information collection center. In this device, various types of air conditioning equipment (ordinary multi air conditioning equipment, ice storage multi air conditioning equipment, cooling / heating free multi air conditioning equipment, central air conditioning equipment, etc.) conventionally provided in a plurality of buildings are provided. Preliminary grasp of specific monitoring data group (discharge pipe temperature, outside air temperature, compressor inverter frequency, etc.) and write in the program which data is to be output to each type of air conditioning equipment and to where in the report , And write reports using the program. For example, the monitoring data that needs to be output in the first type of air conditioning equipment is A, B, and C, and the monitoring data that needs to be output in the second type of air conditioning equipment is A, D, and E. For example, the program outputs monitoring data A, B, and C to a predetermined location in the report of the first model air conditioning equipment, and outputs the data A and B in the report of the second model air conditioning equipment. The contents include that D and E are output to a predetermined place.
[0006]
By the way, recently, the number of building owners participating in the above-mentioned system for managing the facilities of a plurality of buildings at the information collection center has been increasing, and buildings with new types of facilities have been newly added to the information collection center. Connecting to is also increasing. For this reason, the number and types of facilities that need to be handled by the information collection center are gradually increasing. In the case of the present applicant, who operates an information collection center that collects information from the air conditioning equipment of many buildings, there are more than 100 types of air conditioning equipment, both new and old, which are being connected to the information collection center. ing.
[0007]
When many types of facilities are connected to the information collection center in this way, programs used in devices for creating output information such as reports also become enormous in length. Then, as the number of models increases, it is necessary to rewrite the program each time in order to reflect the monitoring data and the like peculiar to the models in the report. When the total number of models is small, rewriting the program is not so troublesome, but as the number of models increases, the work load such as debugging and compiling in rewriting the program each time increases.
[0008]
An object of the present invention is to provide an equipment information output device that creates output information such as a report for each equipment, and that has a relatively small work load required to cope with an increase in the number of types of equipment. .
[0009]
[Means for Solving the Problems]
The equipment information output device according to claim 1 is a device that collects a specific information group from a target equipment group and outputs predetermined output information regarding each equipment. The target equipment group includes a plurality of types of equipment having different specific information groups. This equipment information output device includes a storage unit and an output creation unit. The storage unit stores a database, and the output creation unit executes an output creation program. The database of the storage unit associates the type specifying data for specifying the type of the facility, the information specifying data for specifying the information of the facility, and the layout specifying data for specifying the layout of each piece of information in the output information. The output creation program executed by the output creation unit creates output information using a specific information group collected from the equipment and a database. The output information is, for example, a report on each facility, such as a report listing a group of information such as the expansion valve opening and the temperature of the heat exchanger at each time when the air conditioning facility is targeted. is there.
[0010]
Here, the output creation unit that executes the output creation program creates output information such as a report based on the specific information group collected from the equipment group. The collected information is associated with the type of equipment in the database, and the arrangement in the output information is specified. For this reason, the output creation program itself does not need to include the contents such as what kind of equipment each piece of information is and the arrangement in the output information. This is because the output creation program can finish the collected information group into output information by referring to the database.
[0011]
In this manner, here, the output creation program creates predetermined output information by referring to the database based on the specific information group collected from the equipment. That is, conventionally, in the output creation program, the arrangement in the output information for each of a plurality of specific information is determined for each type of equipment, and the output creation program takes in only the collected information group and outputs the output information. On the other hand, in the equipment information output device of the present invention, a database in which the type specifying data, the information specifying data, and the layout specifying data are associated is provided, and the output creating program adds the database in addition to the collected information group. It is configured to create output information by referring to it.
[0012]
This eliminates the need to rewrite the output creation program itself, even when a new type of equipment is added to the target equipment group and the specific information group of the equipment and the arrangement in the output information are newly determined. However, it is possible to cope only by adding additional data to the database. In addition, when rewriting the output creation program, it is often necessary to temporarily stop the equipment information output device and perform an instool operation of the output creation program. In most cases, there is no need to stop.
[0013]
As described above, in the equipment information output device according to the present invention, the work load required to cope with an increase in the number of types of equipment is smaller than in the related art.
A facility information output device according to a second aspect is the device according to the first aspect, wherein the storage unit further stores a plurality of output formats. The database further associates the type specifying data with the output format. The location specifying data of the database indicates the location of the information in the output format.
[0014]
Here, the output creation program itself is also rewritten when a new type of equipment is added to the target equipment group and it is necessary to finish the information specific to that equipment into output information using an unprecedented output format. Instead, it is possible to respond simply by adding an output format to the storage unit and adding new equipment data to the database.
[0015]
A facility information output apparatus according to a third aspect is the apparatus according to the second aspect, wherein a plurality of output formats have different items of information that can be output.
When there are a plurality of types of facilities having different specific information groups, if there is only one output format for output information such as a report for each facility, that is, output is performed using one output format common to a plurality of types of facilities. When employing a configuration for creating information, a column for information not present in the target facility is present in the output information, and the proportion of the required information group in the output information is reduced. For this reason, when printing output information, there is a possibility that a necessary information group is printed in a small size, or that the print content cannot be accommodated on a small paper.
[0016]
On the other hand, in the device according to the present invention, a plurality of output formats in which items of information that can be output are different are stored in the storage unit. Output information in a format suitable for
[0017]
BEST MODE FOR CARRYING OUT THE INVENTION
<Overall configuration of building air-conditioning remote management system>
FIG. 2 shows a building air-conditioning remote management system including a server computer 50 of an information collection center 20 corresponding to a facility information output device according to an embodiment of the present invention. The building air-conditioning remote management system shown here allows the business operator operating the information collection center 20 to provide various services to the owner of the building 10 and the air-conditioning user who are deploying the air-conditioning equipment 14 having a predetermined external communication function. It is a system for providing services. The building air-conditioning remote management system includes a server computer 50 in the information collection center 20 and an air-conditioning management device 13 of a plurality of air-conditioning equipments 14 that periodically transmit predetermined data to the server computer 50. . Here, the system is premised on many air conditioners 14 provided in a plurality of buildings 10. However, at the time of system startup or in a small system, the system includes one server computer 50 and one air conditioner 14. It may be configured.
[0018]
<Configuration of air conditioner 14 in each building 10>
The air conditioning equipment 14 provided in each building 10 is not necessarily the same type of equipment. For example, in a certain building 10, a plurality of indoor units and outdoor units are controlled and monitored by the air conditioning management device 13 in the building. It is premised that multi-air-conditioning equipment is installed, and a central air-conditioning equipment is installed in another building. There are various types of equipment in multi air conditioning equipment, both new and old, and in central air conditioning equipment, differences in heat source equipment such as chillers, centrifugal chillers, absorption chillers, etc. There are various types of equipment depending on the differences. As described above, there are various types of air conditioning equipment 14, and the air conditioning equipment 14 of each building 10 includes the air conditioning management device 13 having a function of transmitting necessary data to the outside. The air-conditioning management device 13 of each building 10 periodically (for example, once an hour) transmits a specific information group such as component information and temperature information of each device of the air-conditioning equipment 14 to the server computer 50 of the information collection center 20. In addition, when an abnormality or the like occurs, a necessary information group is immediately transmitted to the server computer 50. Naturally, different types of air conditioning equipment have different information groups transmitted to the server computer 50. That is, if the type and version of the air conditioner 14 are different, the specific information group to be transmitted to the server computer 50 is different.
[0019]
The air-conditioning management device 13 has a role of performing air-conditioning control according to a command from a manager or an owner of the building 10 or providing monitoring data of the state of each air-conditioning device to the manager of the building 10 or the like. .
<Configuration of server computer 50 of information collection center 20>
The information collection center 20 is installed to monitor the failure of the air-conditioning equipment 14 in each building 10, predict the failure, manage the fee for using the equipment, propose improvements by data analysis, create various reports, and the like. have. The server computer 50 is composed of one or a plurality of computers, monitors and accumulates various data transmitted from the air conditioning management device 13 of each building 10, and provides many services such as failure monitoring and various report creation. It has the function to do. Among the many functions of the server computer 50, the function of creating a report 59 to be submitted to the manager of the building 10 will be described here. The report 59 includes a dispatch report on the dispatch of a service engineer when the air conditioner 14 has failed, an abnormality report used when the service engineer dispatches, a regular inspection report on a periodic inspection, and annual power consumption. There are annual reports that report on energy saving and energy saving effects, etc., and diagnostic reports that are submitted when equipment diagnosis is performed online.
[0020]
As shown in FIG. 2, the server computer 50 includes an equipment information storage unit 51, a program execution unit 52, and a report storage unit 53.
[Equipment information storage unit 51]
The equipment information storage unit 51 stores and accumulates, as time-series data, information groups regarding the respective devices of the air-conditioning equipment 14 transmitted from the air-conditioning management device 13 of each building 10 regularly or when an abnormality occurs. The huge amount of data accumulated here is used for diagnosis and operation analysis of each air conditioner 14, and is also used for preparing a report to a manager of the building 10 as described below.
[0021]
[Report storage unit 53]
The report storage unit 53 stores a database including a first table 53a and a second table 53b that are referred to by a report creation program 52a described later. These tables 53a and 53b are created by the operator of the information collection center 20 before the system operation, and data necessary when a new air conditioner 14 joins the system during the system operation is added.
[0022]
As shown in FIG. 3, the first table 53a includes type identification data 71 for identifying the type of the air conditioning equipment 14 of each building 10, report sheet identification data 72 for identifying the format of the report 59, and the air conditioning equipment 14. The display information specifying data 73 for specifying the display items to be included in the report 59 among the pieces of information described above and the arrangement specifying data 74 for specifying the arrangement of each information in the report 59. As shown in FIG. 3, for example, in the report of the air conditioner 14 of the model “AAA”, the first table 53a uses the “report sheet 1” to store each information such as “outside air temperature” and the like in the layout specification data 74. Indicates that printing is to be performed at the location specified by. As defined in the first table 53a, a report creation program 52a described later creates a report 59. In this system, a first table 53a for about 180 types of air conditioners 14 is constructed.
[0023]
Further, in the second table 53b, sheet files of a plurality of report sheets, which are output formats of the report 59, are associated with the numbers (ID) of the respective report sheets. FIGS. 4 and 5 show reports 59a and 59b for the different types of air conditioners 14, respectively, which are created using sheet files of different report sheets. In the report 59b of FIG. 5, since the information group that needs to be described is larger than that of the report 59a of FIG. 4, if the report sheet used in the report 59a of FIG. 4 is used, information that cannot be described appears. Therefore, a report sheet used in the report 59b in FIG. 5 is prepared separately from the report sheet used in the report 59a in FIG. In this system, a report sheet is often shared by several types of air conditioners 14, and a sheet file (not shown) of about 30 types of report sheets is stored in the report storage unit 53. It is remembered.
[0024]
[Program execution unit 52]
The program execution unit 52 includes a CPU, a ROM, a RAM, and the like, and executes the report creation program 52a to create a report 59. The program execution unit 52 may be present on the same computer as the computer on which the facility information storage unit 51 is located, or may be located on a different computer. If a computer dedicated to creating the report 59 is provided, the load on other computers in the information collection center 20 can be reduced.
[0025]
The report creation program 52a executed by the program execution unit 52 stores the information group of each air conditioner 14 stored and accumulated in the equipment information storage unit 51 and the two tables 53a and 53b in the report storage unit 53. A report 59 is created using the report. The report 59 has a form as shown in FIGS. 4 and 5, for example. Information on items that need to be reported in the air conditioner 14 of the target model is written in a report 59 in a predetermined format. The reports 59a and 59b shown in FIGS. 4 and 5 are reports issued to a service engineer who rushes to the building 10 when an abnormality occurs in the air conditioner 14, and is a report 30 immediately before the occurrence of the abnormality. An information group for each minute in a minute is described together with time data. These information groups are information groups necessary for abnormal inspection of the air conditioner 14. The report 59a in FIG. 4 reports information such as code, outdoor air suction temperature, outdoor liquid pipe temperature, discharge pipe temperature, suction pipe temperature, liquid pipe closing valve pressure, and service port pressure. The report 59b in FIG. 5 also reports information such as an abnormality code, an outside air temperature, an outside heat exchange temperature, a discharge pipe temperature, a suction pipe temperature, a liquid pipe closing valve pressure, an expansion valve opening degree, an inverter frequency, and the like. Is done.
[0026]
<Characteristics of creation of report 59 by server computer 50>
(1)
Here, the program execution unit 52 that executes the report creation program 52a creates the report 59 based on the information group collected from the air conditioning equipment 14 of each building 10 and stored and accumulated in the equipment information storage unit 51. . Each piece of information written in the report 59 is associated with the type of the air conditioner 14 in the first table 53a, the arrangement in the report 59 is specified, and the report sheet to be used is determined. ing. Therefore, the report creation program 52a does not have to include the contents such as what kind of air conditioning equipment 14 each information is and the location in the report 59, and stores the first and second tables 53a and 53b. By referring to the information, the report 59 can be completed based on the information group collected from each of the air conditioners 14, so that when a building 10 having a new model of the air conditioner 14 is added to the building air conditioning remote management system. Also, it is not necessary to rewrite the report creation program 52a itself, and it is possible to create the report 59 for the new type of air conditioning equipment 14 of the new building 10 simply by adding additional data to the first table 53a and the second table 53b. Will be able to Since there is no need to rewrite the report creation program 52a itself, there is no need to debug or compile the report creation program 52a, install the tool on the server computer 50, or the like, and do not cause disadvantages such as stopping the server computer 50. The addition of the additional data to the first table 53a and the second table 53b can be performed without stopping the server computer 50.
[0027]
(2)
Here, a sheet file (not shown) of about 30 types of report sheets is stored in the report storage unit 53, and a second table 53b is provided in the report storage unit 53. The file is associated with the report sheet number. The plurality of report sheets having different information items that can be displayed correspond to several types of air conditioning equipment 14 (or one type of air conditioning equipment 14). This suppresses such a problem that there are many columns in the report 59 for information that does not exist in the target air conditioning equipment 14, and that the display of the necessary information group is reduced in the report 59.
[0028]
In the present system corresponding to more than 100 types of air conditioners 14, trying to share one report sheet requires too many information items and the report 59 becomes huge. Not a target.
When a sheet file of a new report sheet is added to the report storage unit 53, the file name of the new sheet file is registered together with the report sheet number in the second table 53b.
[0029]
【The invention's effect】
In the facility information output device according to the first aspect, a database in which the type specifying data, the information specifying data, and the layout specifying data are associated with each other is provided, and an output creation program creates output information by referring to the database in addition to the collected information group. The configuration is adopted. This eliminates the need to rewrite the output creation program itself, even when a new type of equipment is added to the target equipment group and the specific information group of the equipment and the arrangement in the output information are newly determined. However, it is possible to cope only by adding additional data to the database. Therefore, the work load required to cope with an increase in the number of types of equipment is smaller than in the past.
[0030]
In the equipment information output device according to claim 2, even when a new type of equipment is added to the target equipment group, it is necessary to finish a specific information group of the equipment into output information by an unprecedented output format. It is possible to cope with this by simply adding an output format to be stored in the storage unit and adding data to the database without rewriting the output creation program itself.
[0031]
In the equipment information output device according to claim 3, since a plurality of output formats in which items of information that can be output respectively are different are stored in the storage unit, even if the information group specific to each equipment greatly differs depending on the type, each equipment is output. Output information in a format suitable for
[Brief description of the drawings]
FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a conventional building air-conditioning remote management system.
FIG. 2 is a block diagram of a building air-conditioning remote management system according to an embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 3 is a schematic configuration diagram of a first database.
FIG. 4 is a diagram showing an example of a report.
FIG. 5 is a diagram showing an example of a report.
[Explanation of symbols]
14 air conditioning equipment (equipment)
50 Equipment information output device (server computer)
52 Program execution unit (output creation unit)
52a Report creation program (output creation program)
53 Report storage unit (storage unit)
53a first database (database)
59 Report (output information)
71 Type specifying data 73 Display information specifying data (information specifying data)
74 Location specific data

Claims (3)

A facility information output device that collects the specific information group from a facility group including a plurality of types of facilities (14) having different specific information groups and outputs predetermined output information (59) for each of the facilities (14). (50)
Type specifying data (71) for specifying the type of the facility (14), information specifying data (73) for specifying information of the facility, and layout specifying data (74) for specifying the layout of the information in the output information (59). A storage unit (53) for storing a database (53a) that associates
An output creation unit (52) that executes an output creation program (52a) that creates the output information (59) using the specific information group collected from the facility (14) and the database (53a);
An equipment information output device (50) comprising: The storage unit (53) further stores a plurality of output formats,
The database (53a) further associates the type specifying data (71) with the output format, and the layout specifying data (74) indicates a layout location of the information in the output format.
The equipment information output device (50) according to claim 1. The plurality of output formats have different items of information that can be output,
The equipment information output device (50) according to claim 2.

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